Nato intensifies strikes on Libyan capital

Nato warplanes struck Tripoli last night in the heaviest bombing of the Libyan capital in weeks, hours after an upsurge in fighting between rebels and Muammar Gaddafi's forces on a long-deadlocked frontline in the country's east.

Nato struck at least four sites in Tripoli, setting off crackling explosions that thundered through the city.

One strike hit a building that local residents said was used by a military intelligence agency. Another targeted a government building that officials said was sometimes used by Parliament members.

It was not immediately clear what the other two strikes hit, but one of them sent plumes of smoke over Tripoli. Libyan officials would not say what that strike hit but the smoke appeared to come from the sprawling compound housing members of Gaddafi's family.

Between explosions, an aircraft dropped flares. Some residents responded by raking the sky with gunfire and beeping their car horns.

The Tripoli bombing came just hours after heavy fighting was reported on the eastern front, south of Ajdabiya, a rebel-held town about 150km south of Benghazi, the rebel headquarters in the east.

Hundreds of rebels gathered at a checkpoint outside Ajdabiya, when an AP photographer counted about 100 pickup trucks coming back from the front, each carrying four or five fighters and some with mounted submachine guns.

The rebels, in jubilant mood, said they had been told that Nato was going to launch airstrikes on Gaddafi's forces and they had been ordered to withdraw temporarily from the front.

No overall casualty figures were available. Two ambulances came to the local hospital, and doctors said they carried the bodies of four rebels.

The cobbled-together rebel army has been bogged down for weeks in the area around Ajdabiya, unable to move on to the oil town of Brega. The rebels say their weapons cannot reach more than about 20km while Gaddafi's forces can fire rockets and shells up to twice that distance. Brega has an oil terminal and Libya's second-largest hydrocarbon complex.

Gaddafi's forces shelled a northern Misrata neighbourhood where many families from the besieged city centre have fled to, said Abdel Salam, who identified himself as a resident-turned-fighter. He said Nato airstrikes hit targets on the city's southern edges, one of the areas where government forces have been concentrated after rebels pushed them back.

The fighting was threatening the port area, the city's only lifeline, preventing some aid ships from docking, Abdel Salam said. A ship carrying medical supplies and baby food was able to dock in Misrata yesterday, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. It was the first ship to arrive since last Thursday.

A ship carrying up to 600 migrants has sunk off the coast of Libya, witnesses have reported, in what would be one of the worst accidents to have befallen refugees fleeing recent unrest in North Africa, if confirmed.

Accounts of the accident, at the end of last week, are only now beginning to emerge. At least 16 bodies, including those of two babies, were recovered from the stricken ship after they washed ashore, the United Nations Refugee Agency has said. It is feared hundreds more could be dead.

Thousands of refugees have attempted to escape fierce fighting in Libya and ongoing unrest in Tunisia for Europe in recent months, leading to overcrowding on boats that are often unsafe.

The UN believes that at least three boats that left Libya for Italy in late March never made it to their destination, disappearing at sea.

Nato has denied that it ignored a vessel in distress carrying African migrants from Libya in late March, leading to the deaths of 62 passengers through starvation and dehydration.

- Independent, AP